Welcome to the May 2012 Birth Board! You and your board-mates will journey together through your pregnancies and beyond, so it's up to you to make your board what you'd like it to be - keep that in mind as you post!

Before you get started here are some things to keep in mind:

You can find the guidelines here:

http://www.babycenter.com/community-help

Also,

1) No cursing in thread titles- and no bending the rule by subbing symbols for letters. But, you may read swearing within threads, so beware!

2) This is meant as a support board, promoting a welcoming environment for everyone. We strongly suggest using a posting style than can be clearly "read in tone" by everyone.

3) Hate speech and personal attacks are not tolerated.

4) Please remember that while other posters can be very helpful you need to take your medical questions to a dr, your legal questions to a lawyer.

5) Please don't post with the intention of starting drama. This includes spin offs on threads that were locked/deleted.

6) If you post it, others are free to post within your thread, even if they don't agree with you. Be warned, we don't delete threads just because the OP didn't like the answers she got.

7)Be sure you carefully consider and check your thread before you post it. In the future, threads will not be deleted unless they are a violation/disruption, not at an OP's request.

8) Name calling (even as a joke) is a Personal Attack and against BBC rules and any such posts will be deleted.

9) There will be times when the Group Owners will need to discuss violation reports in order to best decide on a course of action. These will only be shared with GOs of this board or with BBC MODs.

10) Your group owners are volunteers, there are 4 of us and over 10,000 members of this board. We group owners enforce the BBC rules and guidelines to the best of our abilities.

Your GOs are jennii_jenn, jayla 261, crystal.soucy, and MustangMandy. Your Big Sisters are Indigobaby and acsfowler. Please feel free to click on our profile (left side of the board) and contact us with any questions! Your board's big sisters and GOs will be sharing relevant notes together please indicate if you do not want a PAN shared.

The featured post (in yellow) will always have important info; keep an eye on that!

Click on help in the upper right hand corner. The guidelines are here. When you signed up to post on BBC, you agreed to follow them. There is also a list of the common abbreviations, which will help the newbies!

Birth Clubs are the point of entry for many of BBC's newest members - if you are one of these posters, welcome, and please explore the many other faces of BBC, I think most people are surprised at the wide variety of boards available!

Because birth clubs are the introduction for many members, there is an expectation that they will remain supportive for all who choose to post. If you can't be supportive to a particular poster, the "ignore" feature is available for your use (although you can't ignore a group owner, we can help you if you're not sure how to use the feature) - but please do not announce you're ignoring a specific poster. If you're unable to just not read or respond to a specific post (I have that same problem) then please make sure your comment stays within the guidelines linked above. Remember that the GO's will delete posts that violate these guidelines, and may close threads as necessary.

Remember this about BabyCenter: every member on BabyCenter has the right to share the story of his or her unique parenting journey. Keep that in mind, share your own story, and I hope you make many new friends here.

Please remember that this is the internet and anyone can make a fake profile and make up a story. Please feel free to share with the group as much or as little as you feel comfortable with.